http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X19309026 Limited models are available to estimate human physical health risks (e.g., probability of outcomes such as lung disease, cancer, skin disease) from exposure to chemicals resulting from oil spills that may occur offshore and later impact coastline spills. An approach is presented to assess physical health risks from oil spills that involves establishing a platform capable of assessing aggregate health risk (via inhalation, ingestion, and dermal exposure routes). Gaps include the need to develop models reflecting oil spill concentration distributions given the influence from environmental, physical, biological and chemical factors. Human activities need to be quantified for different populations including emergency response workers, fishermen, shellfish consumers, and children who play at beaches that may be impacted by oil spills. Work is also needed in developing comprehensive toxicological profiles for the majority of chemicals - including dispersants found in oil spills - and to estimate toxicity from mixtures.

Fernandes, Fernandes, C., Khandeparker, R.D.S., Shenoy, B.D., 2020. High abundance of in tarball-contaminated seawater from Vagator beach, Goa, India. Marine Pollution Bulletin 150, 110773.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X19309294 Tarballs are semi-solid remnants of crude oil and they are formed in marine environment after oil-spill incidents. They are composed of diverse hydrocarbons; some of which are recalcitrant in nature. Recent studies based on amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA gene suggested that tarballs support hundreds of bacterial genera and provided insights into their role as hydrocarbon degraders and potential human pathogens. In this study, bacterial composition of tarball-contaminated seawater from Vagator beach, Goa, India was characterized by Vibrio amplicon sequencing of V - V regions of 16S rRNA gene. The DNA data revealed an unusual surge of 3 4 in sea-water contaminated with tarballs in May 2018 (16.16% OTUs), compared to tarball-free seawater samples collected in March 2018 (no detectable OTUs) and September 2018 (0.17% OTUs). Further studies are Vibrio required to investigate if species form biofilms on tarballs which may act as good reservoirs for their survival and transmission success.

Fernandes, G.L., Shenoy, B.D., Damare, S.R., 2020. Diversity of bacterial community in the oxygen minimum zones of Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal as deduced by Illumina sequencing. Frontiers in Microbiology 10, 3153. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019. 03153.

https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2019.03153 The Indian Ocean harbors oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, with dissolved oxygen < 20 μM, located at the mid -depths of the water column. Till date, high-throughput sequence- data on depth-wise distribution of prokaryotic communities have rarely been reported from these OMZs. The present study aimed to characterize the prokaryotic diversity inhabiting Arabian Sea Time Series (ASTS) and India's Idea 2 (II2) in the Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal Time Series (BoBTS) in the Bay of Bengal OMZs based on amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA gene regions, along six sampled depths in the water column. High prokaryotic richness was observed in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal samples. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the range of 1249 - 3298 were identified, wherein, less prokaryotic diversity was observed at surface and within oxygen minimum depths. At phylum level, most OTUs were affiliated to Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Cyanobacteria, Marinimicrobia, Planctomycetes, and Proteobacteria. Prokaryotic community differed between ASTS, II2 and BoBTS locations along varying physicochemical conditions. Predictive functional profiling of the bacterial communities suggested the involvement of abundant microbes in nitrogen and sulfur metabolism path ways. Bacterial isolates belonging to genera from the clades, δ - Proteobacteria and γ -Proteobacteria, described previously for their participation in biogeochemical cycling of N-and-S in the OMZs were reported Candidatus from deoxygenated waters of both the basins. Bacteria involved in anammox such as Scalindua were found to be relatively high at ASTS and II2 locations in the Arabian Sea. Further studies are required to ascertain the role of abundant bacteria along the dynamic oceanographic processes in the OMZs.